Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to BenWilson,
But their reason is usually that they can't just take a piss any time, the way office folks can.
The ability to take toilet breaks at will is highly underrated as a job perk, I've always thought.
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Muse: The High Aesthetic Line, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
Please don't underestimate the importance of a really good director. Actors, even really, really good ones, who have been given no direction, or, as I suspect happens often, have no faith/trust in the director, will give their best, but it will not be a patch on what a good director can get them, by virtue of their being able to trust her/him, to take risks and be bloody marvellous as a result.
I do agree. Film is a fascinatingly collaborative process, where a lot of people have to do their jobs right for it to work; in some ways it's unfair to compare it directly to text, where there's usually only one or two people involved (to the same extent) and a lot fewer ways for it to go wrong.
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
They also can't make a decent cup of tea (my tipple of choice).
Live for six months in a country where every other establishment defines tea as "a Lipton teabag on a saucer with a cup of dubiously hot water on the side, and not a drop of milk in sight" and I guarantee you will change that assessment. And while it's possible to get better coffee than Starbucks in America, it is also surpassingly easy to get much worse, at least outside big cities. Starbucks is popular, not because it's really good, but because it's consistently not too bad - at least compared to lots of the other options.
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Muse: The High Aesthetic Line, in reply to Paul Williams,
I think this is a key part of the explanation; the actors were better in the first trilogy.
This reminds me of what happened to Coupling when they took it to America; nearly the exact same scripts, different actors, total failure. It's really, really easy to underestimate how important good actors are to a film or TV program's success; the writing is important, but really good actors can take a basically mediocre script beyond itself. And, similarly, mediocre actors can make a very good script sag.
If Anakin had been 20 at the time of Ep I, and 40ish around the time of Ep III, the actors playing him and Padme could have really mined the depths of the drama inherent in their relationship from the perspective of two adults whose relationship has crumbled under the strain of their conflicting roles in a dynamic political environment, instead of a highly unconvincing tanty by a teeenager with a metal hand.
I like this, a lot. One suspects Lucas forgot that his target audience wasn't five anymore (or, really, that children are quite capable of enjoying and relating to stories about adults.)
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Muse: The High Aesthetic Line, in reply to BenWilson,
But in some kind of way it makes sense within the context of Anakin’s rise to power, that her condition is a consequence of her involvement with him. They could have done so much more with it, though.
Her death as a consequence of his fall, that makes sense. Stripping her of everything she was and had achieved before killing her...not necessary. Or good story-telling. But doing more with it would have required giving her a thematic arc beyond being Anakin's baby-mama, the kind of story Lucas doesn't seem to be equipped to tell.
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Muse: The High Aesthetic Line, in reply to Ngaire BookieMonster,
You're not alone, I thought III was okay. Right up until the "RAARRRRR VADER MAD!" bit at the end, then my head asploded.
"VADER MAD!" I could live with. Career options for women being reduced to Princess or Dead Mummy? Mmmm, not so much. Okay, they had to get rid of Amidala somehow, but I can think of several ways that would have fitted the character and, hmmm, previously established canon rather better, and avoided the whole "have children, die" thing.
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Legal Beagle: Coalition of Losers, in reply to Pat Hackett,
Polls suggest MMP is looking fairly safe. Unless the New Citizens Party wins the Botany by-election. It is ironic that this would be a nightmare scenario for the MMP referendum.
Really? Even in the off-chance that they do, I don't see it being a "nightmare scenario" unless they then started polling quite well in the party vote, which doesn't seem hugely likely.
I'm also not sure "ironic" is quite the word you were looking for, given that such a result would highlight a well-debated flaw in the MMP system, which is...predictable?
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 1: Beach…, in reply to Ngaire BookieMonster,
Also, I have this feeling that carnivores are generally not great eating? Isn’t that part of the reason most eating animals are herbivores or largely omnivorous? Or am I wrong?
Yep, for mammals and birds, anyway; true carnivores have much lower population densities, making them vastly inefficient to eat, and usually don't seem to be that tasty. Fish, as Jackie notes, seem to be different. But it's the efficiency/danger thing, really - why bother with a (sometimes very omnivorous) bear when deer are found in much higher numbers and are so much less likely to bite you?
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 1: Beach…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
I think it may be from the same source: a very provocative book by two academics who have a NZ connection: Brenda & Robert Vale, "Time to eat the dig? The real guide to sustainable living"
That sounds like what I was thinking of. How much of their research is accurate is, of course, another question entirely.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to James Francis,
What happened to World Peace?
War is peace.